05 - Simplify Irrational Exponents, Part 1 (Radical Exponents, Powers, Pi & More) - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12 | Lumos Learning

05 - Simplify Irrational Exponents, Part 1 (Radical Exponents, Powers, Pi & More) - Free Educational videos for Students in k-12


05 - Simplify Irrational Exponents, Part 1 (Radical Exponents, Powers, Pi & More) - By Math and Science



Transcript
00:00 Hello . Welcome back to algebra . The title of
00:02 this lesson is called irrational exponents . Now it's a
00:05 complicated sounding title but I promise you by the individual
00:08 understand exactly what an irrational exponent is , how to
00:11 deal with them and why they're important . I'm also
00:13 really excited to teach this lesson because In the course
00:16 of this lesson today right now you're going to learn
00:19 the very first concepts that you learn in calculus one
00:22 . Now I very firmly believe that everything in math
00:27 can be fully understandable by everybody and I firmly believe
00:31 in not babying people too much . So what I'm
00:33 doing here is we're gonna introduce and use the concept
00:35 of irrational exponents . But in the course of the
00:37 lesson you're going to understand logically why that idea ,
00:41 that very first idea and calculus one that everyone learns
00:44 is very applicable to this . So pat yourself on
00:47 the back when you're done with this lesson you're going
00:49 to understand the very very fundamental concept of calculus one
00:52 that everyone learns the very first day of calculus one
00:55 in the course of this algebra lesson . So let's
00:57 crawl before we can walk . I promise it will
00:59 all be understandable . We want to talk about irrational
01:02 exponents , those are exponents that are just for lack
01:06 of a better word . Weird . They cannot be
01:07 written as fractions in irrational exponent would be like uh
01:11 two to the power of pie because pies in a
01:14 rational number cannot be written as a fraction or two
01:16 to the power of square root of three . Square
01:19 root of three is irrational . It cannot be written
01:20 as a fraction . So how do you calculate things
01:23 that have radicals or pie or other weird things in
01:27 the expanded itself ? How do you handle it ?
01:29 So let's before we do that , let's take a
01:31 little bit of a trip down memory lane and talk
01:33 about what we know . First of all , we
01:35 already know how to deal with positive exponents , Positive
01:38 expose we've been dealing about for a long time .
01:41 For instance , to to the positive three power Is
01:44 defined as two times two times two , which is
01:47 eight . So we know how to deal with positive
01:48 experience . We also have learned how to deal extensively
01:52 with what have what you do when you have a
01:54 negative exponents . So for instance , we know how
01:57 to deal with it when we have to to the
01:59 negative fourth power . What we do is we take
02:01 this negative exponent and we bring it to the bottom
02:03 of the fraction and make it a positive exponents .
02:06 That negative means you drag it downstairs . Now what
02:08 you have down here is 1/16 because two times two
02:12 times two times two will be 16 . So we
02:14 know how to deal with negative exponents . We have
02:17 also talked extensively about what happens when the exponent is
02:20 actually the number zero . It turns out that anything
02:23 raised to the zero power is defined mathematically just to
02:27 be the number one . And we've talked about in
02:29 the past why this is the case . So if
02:31 you're curious why it's that way , go back to
02:33 my very first lessons on exponents and I talked about
02:35 at great length and then finally very recently the last
02:39 lesson we have talked about what to do when you
02:41 have a rational exponents , that means you have an
02:43 exponent that can be written as a fraction . So
02:45 for instance if you have to to the one third
02:47 power , This is just defined to be the cube
02:52 root of the # two . Okay , or another
02:55 example would be a little more complicated example in this
02:59 would be what do you do if you have four
03:01 to the 3/4 power . Right ? We can write
03:05 this four to the 3/4 power . A couple of
03:07 different ways . We can write it as uh four
03:10 raised to the third power and then to the fourth
03:14 to the 1/4 power . Because we can multiply these
03:16 powers together to give us this . And then when
03:19 we write it this way then what we have is
03:22 four to the third power . We write it as
03:25 the fourth root of that . But another way to
03:28 write it how switch colors to show you that is
03:30 instead of writing it like this , you could say
03:32 that four to the third to the three . Fourth
03:35 power can be writing this four to the 1/4 power
03:38 . And we raise that quantity to the third party
03:40 . See the the order here can be interchanged because
03:43 when you multiply this and you multiply this you get
03:45 exactly the same thing . So if we do it
03:47 this way we have a four that we take the
03:50 fourth root of and then we raise that quantity to
03:52 the third power . So if we have a fractional
03:55 exponent like this we can raise , let me just
03:57 check myself as 434 to the third power and then
04:00 the fourth root of that . Or we can write
04:02 it as the four , doing the fourth root first
04:04 and then raising it to the third power . So
04:07 we know we have to raise it to a power
04:09 and then take the route . We can just do
04:10 them in whatever order we want . Now this is
04:12 all stuff that we have learned in the past .
04:15 What do you do when you have a positive exponent
04:17 ? What do you do when you have a negative
04:18 exponent ? What if you do when you have a
04:19 zero exponent ? What do you do when you have
04:21 a fractional exponent ? We've covered all of that .
04:23 Now what we need to do is what does this
04:26 mean ? What does this mean ? And what am
04:35 I referring to just as an example , what if
04:37 you have two to the power of square root of
04:39 three ? We have never covered that before . We've
04:42 never talked about . What do you do when the
04:43 exponent itself ? It cannot be written as a fraction
04:46 or a negative or a positive number or zero .
04:48 What do you do ? Well the punch line ,
04:50 I'm gonna give you the punchline and then we're gonna
04:51 go and do a little bit of background work to
04:53 kind of show you why it's the case the punch
04:55 line is . You treat these exponents As exactly what
05:00 the same rules as all of the other exponents .
05:02 You can add them , you can subtract them ,
05:04 you can multiply them . It depends on the situation
05:06 you're in . We're going to do a lot of
05:07 problems like that , but this radical appear should not
05:10 scare you . Right ? You're going to use the
05:12 same rules of algebra . What if you have three
05:14 to the power of you know , two pi Because
05:17 Pi is irrational . You it's an exponents a number
05:20 3.14159 pie goes on and on and on forever .
05:23 It's irrational . But you treat uh those exponents with
05:27 exactly the same rules that you treat any other experts
05:30 . Let's explore why that is the case . And
05:32 in the course of learning how to calculate that and
05:36 what it really means to calculate something like this .
05:38 We're gonna learn a tiny bit of calculus right along
05:40 the way so that we're going to do here .
05:42 How would we calculate two to the power of square
05:45 root of 3 ? All right . Two to the
05:47 power of square root of three really is the following
05:51 thing . Now I know we're not all human calculators
05:54 , but basically the square root of three is when
05:57 you truncated is 1.732 dot dot dot dot dot dot
06:02 . That means these decimals go on and on and
06:04 on . They never repeat and they're not because they
06:07 don't repeat . You can't write it as a fraction
06:09 . That's what it means to be irrational . So
06:11 how do you calculate an expo that has an infinite
06:13 set of decimals that go on and on and on
06:15 and on like that ? Well , you have to
06:17 use a concept from calculus . That's very very very
06:21 uh ties very much into what we're doing here .
06:23 So we're gonna kind of go over that . What
06:25 you do is you forget about the all the decimal
06:27 places way over here . What you do is you
06:28 say I want to approximate this . Let's approximate since
06:31 it's 1.7 roughly speaking then let's first approximation , let's
06:36 just say it's to the first power . That's a
06:38 really bad approximation of this actual number . But if
06:41 you would take it to the first power , you
06:43 would just get an exact number of two . All
06:45 right , let's make a slightly better approximation . Let's
06:48 say it's two to the power of 1.7 . That
06:51 is a little bit closer to the actual value of
06:53 the square to three , but it's obviously not quite
06:55 right because these decimals go on and on forever ,
06:58 But this 1.7 how do you evaluate a decimal like
07:00 that ? We'll see any decimal that doesn't go on
07:03 and on forever . Like this one I can write
07:05 it as a fraction , I can say this is
07:06 17/10 . I want you to convince yourself that 17/10
07:11 is exactly the same thing as 1.7 because when you
07:14 divide by 10 you take the decimal and move at
07:16 one spot to the left . So 1.7 is exactly
07:19 17 10th and you now know how to evaluate exponents
07:24 with fractions , it's really gnarly but you can do
07:28 it , this is to raise to the 17th power
07:31 , Take the result of that and you take the
07:32 10th root of it . Or you could say to
07:35 take the 10th root of it and then raise the
07:37 result to the 17th power . So you can calculate
07:40 this exactly And if you did that you would get
07:44 3.2490 . So this number is a little bit closer
07:51 to the actual square root of three . And as
07:53 a result , this number that you get is a
07:55 little bit closer than our first approximation , which is
07:57 really bad because this was really not close at all
08:00 , but it was where we started from . Okay
08:02 , alright , let's switch colors and let's get a
08:04 little bit closer , let's get a little closer to
08:06 the square root of 32.1 point 73 We took one
08:11 more of the decimals here . How would we calculate
08:14 this ? It would be to to the 173 divided
08:18 by 100 . Now this is again a gnarly ,
08:20 gnarly , Very ugly uh fractional exponent . But again
08:24 , two to the 173 power , you can calculate
08:27 that , get the result and you can take the
08:29 100th root of it , you can do that ,
08:31 you can do a giant factor tree , look for
08:33 a set of 100 commonality , you can get the
08:36 exact number but when you run it through a calculator
08:38 , the number that you're gonna get is three 3173
08:43 . You see what's happening ? Our first approximation was
08:46 very crude . But as we get a little closer
08:48 we get a little closer to the real value .
08:50 As we get slightly more closer we get even a
08:52 little bit closer to the value . Let's give it
08:54 one more time . Let's go one more time to
08:57 get a little closer to that . 1.732 . We
09:00 take one more decimal . Of course there's more decimals
09:03 after it . But this is going to be how
09:05 would we calculated 2 to the power of 1732 divided
09:09 by 1000 . Because you divide by 1000 you move
09:12 the decimal three places 123 that's exactly what it is
09:16 . So to raise to the power of 1732 that's
09:20 crazy . Take the value and then you take the
09:22 1000 through the computer can do that . I'm not
09:25 gonna do that . What you're gonna get is the
09:27 value exactly 3.321 night . So the whole point of
09:32 this exercise is to show you people say how do
09:34 you calculate an exponent that has a radical in it
09:37 like that . That's irrational because the decimals never end
09:40 . The truth is you can't calculate it exactly right
09:43 by by because of the decimals never really end .
09:46 But what you can do is you can get closer
09:48 and closer and closer and closer By taking more and
09:52 more and more of the decimals and drawing in a
09:54 closer approximation to the number and you can see that
09:57 my answer is getting closer and closer to a real
10:00 value notice this is 3.32 and some change this is
10:03 3.3 and some change this is .3.3 and some change
10:06 , it's getting closer and closer to a final value
10:09 . 3.3 something something it's gonna be the actual value
10:13 of two to the power of square to three .
10:14 So if I continue this process then ultimately I want
10:20 to calculate two to the power of square 23 And
10:22 I'm getting closer and closer and closer , this is
10:24 the exact number I want and when you run this
10:27 through a calculator or computer , the actual number you're
10:29 gonna get is 3.3219971 dot dot dot . The reason
10:37 the dots is because this is an irrational exponents ,
10:40 it has infinite decimal places in the exponents but I
10:42 could of course take more and more and more decimals
10:44 and I would get an approximation closer and closer and
10:46 closer to the uh to the answer you get from
10:50 a computer , which would be something like this .
10:52 You see the approximation is getting closer and closer so
10:55 what you can do and this is the part where
10:57 the kind of the calculus comes into it here ,
10:59 you can define to find notice . This is we
11:05 took a successive approximations to to the first two to
11:08 the 1.72 to the 1.732 to the 1.73 to 2
11:12 to the this is the exact thing we're trying to
11:14 find . You can define something called two to the
11:17 power of x . Notice by putting a variable in
11:20 the exponents , I can actually change the value of
11:23 the exponents just like I did here , getting closer
11:25 and closer and closer . I'm just changing the exponent
11:27 here by putting the variable in the exponents . It
11:30 allows me to change it to whatever I want because
11:32 it's a variable up there . Okay , this thing
11:36 to to the value of X is called an exponential
11:42 function . Now , in just a little bit we
11:48 are going to study exponential functions in great detail .
11:51 It's one of the most important functions in all of
11:53 math and there's tons of reasons I can give you
11:56 give you for that to to tell you that so
11:58 you believe me but I'm not gonna do that now
12:00 right now . We're just focusing on understanding this rational
12:03 expo but just know this thing is called an exponential
12:05 function . We're going to learn all about it right
12:08 now , if you let X approach the value of
12:14 the square root of three , that means he gets
12:16 closer and closer and closer , just like I did
12:17 here , closer , closer , closer closer , I
12:20 can't really ever get here because it's infinite decimal places
12:23 but I can get closer and closer and closer if
12:25 I let it get closer and closer and closer ,
12:27 uh I'll be right over here closer and closer .
12:32 I mean I can continue writing decimals to the end
12:34 of the universe but I'm still never gonna quite get
12:36 there but I'll get infinitely close to this guy .
12:39 Then what you can write down is the following very
12:42 , very important thing . You can take what we
12:46 call the limit as X approaches the number , the
12:50 square root of three , but it never quite really
12:52 gets there . But it gets really close and I'm
12:55 gonna take the limit of the function to to the
12:57 power of X . That means I put an X
13:00 value in a really crude one of one and then
13:02 I put an X value and a little bit closer
13:04 . 1.7 and then I put a little bit closer
13:06 . 1.73 A little bit closer . 1.732 A little
13:09 bit closer . A little bit closer . A little
13:10 bit closer . I get infinitely close to this very
13:13 specific thing I'm trying to calculate then what's going to
13:16 happen is I'm going to then have a answer which
13:21 is approximately because I can never really quite get there
13:23 of 3.321971 dot dot dot dot dot never ends .
13:29 So all of this to tell you that the way
13:33 that you actually calculate fractional exponents , like if you
13:36 really had to do it by paper and pencil ,
13:37 I mean we all know we can go to a
13:39 calculator and punching in there and get the , get
13:41 the thing but with the calculator is doing is it
13:43 takes successive approximations really , really close and to as
13:47 many decimals as your display can show you and it
13:49 just gives you that guy truncate the rest , it
13:52 doesn't do it all the way . But mathematically you
13:55 can take this thing called a limit which means we
13:58 define a new function which is called exponential function where
14:01 the variables up top in the exponent and we let
14:04 this variable get closer and closer and closer and closer
14:06 to what we're really trying to calculate two to the
14:08 power of the squared of three and then we're going
14:11 to get However we get as far as close as
14:13 we can see the real actual value . You can
14:15 get a computer to calculate this thing to 100 million
14:17 decimal places or 500 trillion decimal places . It's just
14:21 gonna take time . But mathematically this thing called a
14:23 limit is Is writing down what you're doing , you're
14:26 getting closer and closer to calculate that value . This
14:29 concept of the limit is the very first thing you
14:31 learn in calculus one . It is really the foundation
14:34 upon which all of calculus is based . So you've
14:37 now learned it in general idea here in algebra .
14:41 All right , so now that we know what a
14:45 irrational exponent is , it's an exponent that has uh
14:49 can be written as a fraction . Mathematically we would
14:52 get closer and closer to the actual value by doing
14:54 something like this . This is what a computer does
14:57 . Calculus defines what these things are by taking this
15:00 thing called a limit . As the exponent of this
15:03 thing called an exponential function gets closer and closer now
15:06 , what we need to do is solve a couple
15:08 of problems to show you how to handle it if
15:11 you actually have an irrational exponent there . So for
15:14 instance if you have three to the power of the
15:16 square root of two , multiplied by three to the
15:19 power of square root of two . How do you
15:21 handle it ? Obviously I don't want to calculate all
15:24 the decimal glory details of what that power is .
15:27 I want to keep it exact . I want to
15:29 keep it as a radical but you follow the same
15:31 rules of algebra to get there . So here you
15:34 have three to a power three to a power the
15:36 basis of the same . So you can add these
15:38 exponents together Square root of two plus the square root
15:42 of two . How do I know I can do
15:44 that ? I want you to think this is exactly
15:50 the same as X squared times X cubed the basis
15:55 of the same . I add the exponents base is
15:58 the same , add the exponents . But in this
16:00 case the exponents are just really weird . So what
16:03 I have is when I add squared of two plus
16:05 the square root of two , it's just two times
16:08 the square root of two . Because I've added them
16:10 together . There's two of them there . Now I
16:11 can leave this as the correct as the final answer
16:14 . I can do that but I want to go
16:16 a little step further and try to simplify it .
16:18 If I can I can write this as three squared
16:22 raised to the square root of two . How can
16:24 I do that ? Because I multiply when I have
16:26 a power raised to a power I multiply them .
16:28 That gives me what I have here . But I
16:30 know that three squared is nine To the race of
16:33 the power of the squared of two . Okay ,
16:36 and that's the final answer . Now do not try
16:38 . This does not mean that you're taking the square
16:41 root of nine . It doesn't mean that the radical
16:43 applies to the nine , it means that it's the
16:45 number nine raised to a power but that power is
16:49 not written as a fraction . It can't be because
16:51 this square root of two is irrational . If you
16:54 put it in a calculator you're gonna get all these
16:56 decimals that go on and on forever because it cannot
16:59 be written as one half or one third or 1/4
17:01 or 1/5 or 1/8 or whatever . It can't it's
17:03 just a squared of two . That's the exact value
17:06 . So you leave your answer as nine raised to
17:08 the power of this radical notice we use the same
17:11 rules of algebra , we just added them together .
17:13 Now if you really had to calculate the decimal form
17:16 of it , you would do something like this ,
17:18 you would start with a crude approximation . Get closer
17:20 , get closer , get closer and you would get
17:22 as many decimals as you needed to calculate approximation for
17:25 the answer . But the real answer would be this
17:29 limit concept . You would take nine to the power
17:32 of X and you would get X get closer and
17:34 closer and closer to the square root of two .
17:36 Getting more and more and more accuracy . And then
17:38 in the in the infinite limit there as you get
17:40 closer and closer to it , that would be what
17:41 the value actually is . All right . What if
17:44 we have four raised to the power of the square
17:47 root of two and then we're gonna raise that entire
17:50 thing . That's the square of to their to the
17:53 third power . How do we handle that ? Well
17:55 , it's the same rules of algebra . We have
17:57 a power raised to a power . So we multiply
18:00 those together four times and then three times the square
18:04 root of two . Right now , of course I
18:06 can leave it like this , but I can simplify
18:08 further because you know that when you have three times
18:10 squared of two , that basically you can flip the
18:13 order of these guys here , Right ? So if
18:15 I wanted to , I could say uh four to
18:18 the third power raise to the square of to see
18:21 all I did was take these guys and flip them
18:23 around , right ? And I know that four to
18:25 the third power is four times four times 4 ,
18:28 14 . 4 , 16 , 16 times four Is
18:31 64 raised to the power of the squared of two
18:34 . Of course you could leave it like this .
18:36 But this is simpler because I've reduced the exponent as
18:39 far as it can go . The base comes out
18:40 to be 64 . These are exactly equivalent but this
18:43 is gonna be a little bit simpler . Yeah .
18:47 All right . Let's crank right along . What if
18:48 we have three raised to the power of the squared
18:52 of two and then we raise that whole thing to
18:54 another power of the squared of two . So this
18:57 would be like think three squared and then I'll square
19:00 that . It's just that the exponents are weird .
19:02 They have these radicals in there . So it's still
19:05 a power raised to a power . So I can
19:07 multiply those powers together so I can do it how
19:10 you can write it however you want . But I'm
19:11 going to write this is three raised to the square
19:13 root of two squared . Now this might look a
19:16 little weird to you but when I multiply the powers
19:18 together , it's squared of two times the square root
19:21 of two . That means squared of two squared all
19:23 of this sits in the exponent of three . Now
19:26 the two will cancel with the radical because a square
19:29 cancels with the square root . That's going to leave
19:31 me with just a two . What's left over ?
19:34 Basically , you can see that the two here will
19:36 cancel with the radical . Leaving a two behind and
19:39 three squared is nine . This is the final answer
19:43 . All right . Getting some practice here . Not
19:46 too bad . Let's crank through the next one .
19:49 What if we have three to the power of square
19:53 root of two plus two over three ? To the
19:57 power of square two to minus two . Now notice
20:00 that this plus in this minus . They all exist
20:03 in the exponent . This plus two and this minus
20:05 two . That's all upstairs in the expo So a
20:09 lot of students will look at something like that ,
20:11 stare at it and just have no idea where to
20:13 go . But remember when you have things added together
20:16 in an exponent , you can always write it as
20:18 a multiplication . These are added together . So this
20:21 is exactly the same thing as the square root of
20:23 two . And I'm gonna multiply by another three squared
20:27 . Why ? Because the basis of the same ,
20:29 I can add the exponents together and that's exactly what
20:31 I have here . So I just break it apart
20:33 and go backwards On the bottom . It'll be the
20:36 3 to the squared of two times . You have
20:39 a negative 2 , 3 to the negative to power
20:42 . All right . So let me kind of rewrite
20:44 this here . So I don't kind of destroy what
20:46 I have squared of two , three squared and then
20:50 I have three to the square root of two and
20:54 then three to the negative to now you see what
20:56 I have . I have a situation where this entire
21:00 number , whatever it comes out to be is on
21:01 the top of the fraction but it's also on the
21:03 bottom of the fraction so they divide away . And
21:05 so what I have is three squared over three to
21:08 the negative two . There's several ways you can do
21:10 this but I'm gonna write this three squared as just
21:12 nine and then this is gonna be 1/3 squared which
21:17 is all still in the bottom here . So it's
21:20 gonna be 9/1 9th . That's what's down there .
21:23 And so I can do the division here . This
21:25 will be 9/1 . That's what's in the numerator ,
21:28 change the fraction division of multiplication , take this and
21:31 flip it over . It will be 9/1 and it'll
21:33 be 81 . 9 times nine is 81/1 . So
21:35 it's just 81 and that's the final answer . Now
21:38 . Of course , I could have just done it
21:40 from here . I mean there's multiple ways I can
21:42 do it . I can subtract these exponents if I
21:45 want to , I could have gone , you know
21:47 , from this step . Right here I have ,
21:49 this is gone . So this will be three to
21:51 the two minus a negative too . Because I can
21:55 subtract the exponents . Oh , that's gonna be three
21:57 to the fourth power . And when you do three
21:59 to the fourth power , three times three is 99
22:02 times three is 27 . 27 times three is 81
22:05 . So you get exactly the same thing whether you
22:07 do it this way or if you kind of go
22:08 the other way that I went , you're always going
22:10 to get the same answer . All right . So
22:14 , same rules of algebra are always applying . All
22:20 right , we have a couple more . Mhm .
22:22 What if we have ? Okay , Let's take a
22:26 look at seven to the power of the square root
22:29 of three , Multiplied by 7 to the power of
22:33 square root of two . How do you handle that
22:35 ? Well , the basis of the same , but
22:37 the exponents are different . So I can just add
22:39 those seven to the square root of three plus the
22:42 square root of two . That's all exist in the
22:44 exponent . I can add this is like X squared
22:46 times X to the third . I can add the
22:48 exponents . Now , a lot of students will try
22:51 to do things with this . Well , I'll try
22:52 to say maybe this is a square to five ,
22:54 but we'll add the three and the two or maybe
22:56 they'll do something else . Weird . I mean ,
22:57 the truth is sometimes this is kind of a trick
23:00 question and this is one of those . There's nothing
23:01 else you can do . You add the exponents ,
23:03 but you can't really add them because what's underneath the
23:06 radical is different . If you remember from radical rules
23:10 , you can only really add them if they're like
23:12 terms and these are unlike terms . If it was
23:15 the square root of three in the square of three
23:17 , I could add them . But they're totally different
23:19 . So you just have to leave it like this
23:20 . So it's a weird expression , 7 to the
23:22 power of this stuff . But that's what it is
23:26 . All right . So let's change it a little
23:28 bit from what I have above . Let's change it
23:30 and make it seven to the square root of three
23:33 . Raise that whole thing To the square root of
23:37 two . So this is the square of three on
23:39 the bottom . Sorry about that . Can't really read
23:42 that . So let me rewrite it square to three
23:44 on the bottom . And then you have a squared
23:45 of two here you have a power raised to a
23:47 power , so you have the square root of three
23:50 times square root of two . Because I'm multiplying the
23:52 exponents together . Now . You should remember back from
23:55 radicals when you have radicals multiplied , I can just
23:58 multiply what's under the radicals ? Seven to the power
24:01 of three times two is six . Because when I
24:04 have to radicals multiply together , I can multiply what's
24:07 under the radicals . So notice that when the radicals
24:10 are added together you can't really do anything further with
24:12 it . But when they're multiplied together , I can
24:14 multiply what's underneath . And that all comes back from
24:17 the rules of of radicals . The rules of fractional
24:21 exponents . We've done all that in the past .
24:24 Okay , So if you have any questions about why
24:26 you're doing certain things here , you totally you don't
24:28 know why you can multiply these , that all comes
24:30 from radical . Uh you know the rules of radicals
24:32 who have done in the past . So let's say
24:35 you have seven to the square root of three Plus
24:39 two , that's in the expo and on the bottom
24:41 here , you have 49 . How do we simplify
24:43 this ? Well , first of all , you notice
24:45 49 is pretty closely related to seven . So what
24:49 I'm gonna do is on the top , I'm gonna
24:50 write this is seven times a squared of three .
24:53 These are multiplied . So I can multiply . I'm
24:55 sorry , added . So this can be times seven
24:57 squared . How can I do that ? Because I
24:59 can add these exponents together , which is exactly what
25:02 I have on the bottom . 49 can be written
25:05 as seven times 7 . Right ? So what I
25:08 have here is seven to the square root of three
25:11 times seven squared over seven squared . And so I
25:17 can say well this seven squared cancels with the seven
25:20 squared . And so what I will be left with
25:22 is seven to the power of square root of three
25:24 . And that's the final answer . Yeah . So
25:27 I hope you have learned from from doing these problems
25:31 that the rules that you apply to exponents when they're
25:34 irrational are the same exact rules . Sometimes you can
25:36 add the exponents . Sometimes you can subtract multiply and
25:39 divide them all . The rules are the same .
25:41 There's no difference in the rules but you do have
25:43 to get comfortable with the idea of having radicals running
25:46 around . It's not just radicals . Pi is irrational
25:49 . There are other numbers and math that are irrational
25:52 that we'll learn about later that you can have an
25:53 exponents but it doesn't really matter . The main thing
25:57 for you to understand is that anything you have an
25:59 exponent follows the rules of exponential nation that we've learned
26:02 . Now . If you want to learn the details
26:04 behind how a computer calculates those numbers on the screen
26:07 , we kind of went through that , we talked
26:08 about the concept of a limit . Where in calculus
26:11 you're gonna learn that you have a function . This
26:13 is called an exponential function where the variable itself .
26:16 This is not like x square X squared is not
26:19 an exponential function because this is just a variable race
26:23 to a number . This is different , this is
26:25 the number raise to a a power that is a
26:28 variable that's called an exponential function we can use and
26:32 make that exposed to get closer and closer and closer
26:34 to the desired value through this thing called the limit
26:36 and you get more and more decimals to get more
26:38 and more accurate to answer . That's a foundation of
26:41 calculus one . Alright , but for now what you
26:44 need to know is how to handle these things ,
26:45 how to handle these irrational , expose , we've done
26:48 that here and also to know that this is an
26:49 exponential function . We're going to talk extensively about that
26:52 probably six or seven or eight lessons and then we
26:55 also have the concept of a logarithms which is very
26:58 closely related to an exponential function . Also we're gonna
27:01 get there very soon . So follow me on to
27:03 the next lesson , we're gonna wrap up the concept
27:05 of these irrational exponents in algebra .
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